Ahead of the Friday, Jan. 20 swear-in of US President-Elect Donald Trump, the price of Bitcoin has started picking up from its recent slump.
For the first time since the drop or correction in price following the People’s Bank of China’s onsite inspection of key Bitcoin exchanges in the country - taking a dip as low as $755 - the price has followed an upward trend that has seen it rise to the $895 range according to coinmarketcap.com (though it now sits at $883 at the time of writing).
Whether this is connected to the Asian stocks and the pound that sagged on Tuesday, as investors await Theresa May’s speech in which she is expected to lay out plans for Brexit from the European Union and potentially the single market, is still unknown.
Certainly, however, the ascension into office of Mr. Trump has been predicted to have an impact on the price of the digital currency. A Saxo Bank “Outrageous Prediction For 2017” predicted that the spending binge of a Trump presidency could create ideal conditions for the price of Bitcoin to test $2,000 this year as the possibility of the US dollar skyrocketing could force emerging markets to seek alternatives.
For now, reports say there is growing uncertainty over the policies of Trump which have hurt equities as speculation is rife that the US president-elect would enact bold stimulus and reflationary measures once in office. As a result, MSCI’s broadest index of Asia-Pacific shares outside Japan lost 0.1 percent, while Japan’s Nikkei brushed a five-week low and was down 0.4 percent at one point, reports The Guardian.
Kim Dotcom factor
Kim Dotcom’s trumpeted launch of his Megaupload 2.0 and its potential Bitcoin wallet Bitcache system in January has also been cited as a likely factor to affect the price of the currency. However, the launch date is yet to be confirmed.
In another vein, the global weekly trading volume record on LocalBitcoins was broken in the week ending Dec. 31. This is an indication which shows that P2P trading is getting stronger in some countries including those in South America and Europe, with more people using Bitcoin for real.
Where the current rise will lead to is indeterminate at the moment but Tuur Demeester of Adamant Research suggests that the next resistance could be at $920.
Other top currencies that recorded a push in their prices include Monero, Dash and Steem.